What comes ready to use
There is no shortage of customer relationship management (CRM) software available out there. A CRM’s out-of-the-box capabilities are often where you can begin to draw differences in determining which one best meets your business needs. Some are free and others of course are not.
In this post we are going to take a look at the out-the-box capabilities of a relatively popular and free CRM, HubSpot CRM along with the Infor CRM system. Previously we wrote about Comparing Infor CRM to HubSpot CRM + Sales Pro.
Before having to worry about add-ons and upgrades, it’s important to not only know what you’re going to get from the start but also where you can get the most for your investment. It also helps you to determine what you don’t need because there’s no need to add unnecessary complexity.
#8 of our 18 requirements for business success with CRM states "First, Use as Much Out-of-Box Functionality as You Can"
HubSpot CRM
As just mentioned, HubSpot’s CRM software is free. Its greatest benefit is that it helps you to organize, track your sales and close more deals with less work. If you are searching for ways to better manage your customers and ultimately improve your sales process productivity, this CRM fits the bill. It allows you to store as many as one million contacts, companies, deals and tasks to help your business improve its sales process. It offers automation as a sales person can enter a prospects email, add new leads directly from their inbox with one click to make it user friendly.
Deal management in HubSpot Sales
View activity of how people are responding to your messages
With HubSpot CRM your sales force is able to locate contacts because they are in one place and also provide a better prospect experience because of the accessibility of useful, relevant, and contextual information. Next to HubSpot CRM being a free product, the most attractive aspect about the software is that it bodes a 10-second installation process.
Here a few of the out-of-the-box capabilities offered by HubSpot CRM.
- Deals & Tasks – your pipeline is the lifeline of your business so the deals and tasks capability helps you to manage each lead and track the progress of each lead so that you don’t miss any sales opportunities.
- Contact Management – It’s important to keep track of your contacts and have a way to easily manage their records to keep your sales force up to date. It’s even more important to be able to quickly access details about each record like revenue, industry, and contact details that create less manual data entry.
- Lead Management – Having your lead records in one place means faster access to them and less time preparing for sales calls. With detailed company information, lead information, and communication history your sales team can approach each opportunity knowing the what, when, why, and how before making calls or sending emails.
- Insights – With just a prospect’s corporate email address you can quickly access HubSpot’s database of over 20 million businesses to get details to help arm your sale force.
- Email Tracking – There’s little value in sending sales emails without knowing when they’re opened and read. Tracking your sales email allows you to follow-up right away and increase your opportunity to close deals faster.
- Email Templates – For repetitive sales emails save time by using templates that you can customize and optimize and send through any number of emails services.
Other Features |
Multiple views and drag and drop functionality for deal tracking through customizable funnel stages |
Robust contact records that share the same database as the HubSpot marketing suite |
Company records that allow for easy additions of staff as contacts |
Automatic data population in records for company and individual records |
Advanced filtering capabilities for customizable dashboard views |
Advanced search features that allow you to save significant time locating contact records |
Complete sales calls, send emails, log personal notes, attach files and tag other users for communication on prospects |
As can be seen, HubSpot CRM is designed to help your sales force close deals faster and easier. It is full of tools and features that allow each sales person to manage their pipeline and nurture their leads more effectively. And while you get all of this out-of-the-box, HubSpot CRM, without add-ons, is strictly concerned with sales. But what about the role of marketing and customer service that are key to increased sales productivity but ultimately, business acceleration?
Infor CRM
With Infor CRM your software can be implemented, adapted, and customized to help you focus on business acceleration. This is because Infor CRM is designed to be integrated solution for use in the major business units in your company: Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service. When discussing business acceleration we are talking about growing your business, not just increasing sales.
Easily Personalized Decision Management Dashboard
Infor CRM Xbar inside Outlook productivity
Here a few of the out-of-the-box capabilities offered by Infor CRM
- Sales: your sales team can use features like opportunity management, sales process automation, calendar and activity management, and many other sales productivity tools to build sales funnels and drive opportunities.
- Marketing: your marketing team can use prospect and customer information to launch and track marketing campaigns and target specific market segments.
- Customer Service: With Ticket Management and the ability to build an in-system knowledge database your customer service team is able to document customer issues, quickly resolve them and deliver quality customer service that builds loyalty and profitable customer relationships. Note this is a capability not available in HubSpot CRM.
- Analytics & Reporting: Insights drive profitability and with Infor CRM, you are able to track business and team performance to help increase individual and overall effectiveness. These insights are captured from standard out-of-the-box reporting and list management, interactive analysis tools, and specialized business intelligence and inform decisions in your business. Your marketing team can also use reporting and analytics to monitor the responsiveness to your campaign and track ROI.
- Mobile:with smartphones and tablets your sales team can access rich CRM functionality through a customizable, browser-based application when on the road. They can access account and contact information, charts, their schedule, and activities.
- Technology: Infor CRM’s flexible and robust configuration capabilities allows for your business to have a dynamic personalized user experience. No matter the requirements of you business or industry features such as integration, security, advanced process automation, and more.
Other Features |
Enriched user interface and behaviors with adjusted text boxes, grids, navigation menu and personalization options |
New import tools for contacts and accounts using CSV, Outlook, and other delimited file formats with configurable field mapping |
Filters and new metrics via Web Admin roles |
Group manager to allow you to share groups and group ownership, delete groups, and reassign groups. |
Ability to integrate your marketing and sales efforts with Salesfusion or InboxGuru for Marketing Automation |
Additional Resources
Create the CRM Vision for a Better Future
18 Factors to guarantee business success with CRM
Get daily insight into who your emails reach and when
10 Things you can do to Accelerate Selling to Revenue
Productive and Fun Task Management in HubSpot CRM
Topics: Adaptable CRM eMarketing Effectiveness Business success with CRM Business Drivers for CRM